Here are some recent books on Christology, a total of 14 biblical-theological works on the study of Christ. The books I recommended in a previous blog focus on questions about the Jesus of history. But the books in this current blog focus more on Jesus as he relates to theology. These books center on such issues as his preexistence and incarnation, his messianic identity, his titles, and whether he was God manifest in the flesh. Some of these studies I use, or have used, as textbooks in my courses. What I mean by “recent” is relative to our century—works that have come out or have been revised after the year 2000. These books are not numbered from best to worst or vice/versa. I simply number them alphabetically by the last name of the author.
1. Paul N. Anderson, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6. Third new edition. Eugene: Cascade, 2010.
Although this work was originally written pre-2000, the third printing has a new and expanded introduction, outline, and epilogue sections that address a number of recent Johannine interpretative issues. When these sections are combined with the survey of scholars on Christology in Part I, the number of pages you will be reading already amounts to the size of a modestly-sized book. This study is definitely not for the beginner or typical church-goer; it is a revised dissertation focused on the interpretation of Christology in John 6. Whether or not you end up agreeing with his interpretations, Professor Anderson’s expertise in John is well-known and well-respected among biblical scholars. It is also unique on this list because it centers on John’s Gospel.*
2. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
This study is revised and expanded from Bauckham’s earlier work, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament. He argues that Jesus participated in the divine identity of Israel’s God. Early Christ followers did not have a problem finding their Jewish monotheism compatible with worshipping Jesus as God. The leading chapter, “God Crucified,” is one of this book’s highlights. Bauckham is one of those scholars that I recommend others to read if they want to dig deeply into the biblical person of Christ.
3. Michael F. Bird, Craig A. Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles E. Hill, and Chris Tilling, How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014.
These five scholars team up to respond to Bart Ehrman’s similarly titled, How Jesus Became God. They come to conclusions that suggest an early high Christology among Jesus believers. This book rides on the fence of Christology and the historical Jesus. I found Evan’s chapter, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right” a particularly helpful piece in this collection, though it seems more related to history than theology. Of course, though, when we are speaking about Jesus, it is difficult to keep history and theology separate. These authors continue to write along the lines of their expertise.
4. Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2024.
For the apologetics-oriented reader, this is a recent practical work along this line. It is aimed at responding to the objections about Christ that people from cult groups and non-Christian religions might have. Bowman was once a researcher for the Christian Research Institute (CRI) many years ago, as was I. He is now the President of the Institute for Religious Research. I have not read this work yet, but I do know that Bowman has a wealth of experience addressing such objections. Komoszewski teamed up with him before on a work entitled, Putting Jesus in His Place (foreword by Darrell Bock).
5. David B. Capes. The Divine Christ: Paul, the Lord Jesus, and the Scriptures of Israel. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.
This modestly-sized study is more user-friendly than Capes’s earlier work, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (WUNT 2/47; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992). Capes sets out to study Jesus as Lord (Kyrios). When Paul quotes a text from the Old Testament that has the word “Lord” in it, sometimes God is the referent for the divine name, YHWH. But other times, Jesus is the referent for YHWH, as Capes demonstrates. This is a readable book with a compelling case; more writings like this one are needed.**
6. Gordon D. Fee. Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007.
This is the most thoroughly exegetical work on Paul’s Christology of its kind. Beginning with 1 Thessalonians, Fee examines the various designations given to Jesus—passage by passage—whether Lord, Messiah, second Adam, preexistent with Israel, and so forth. It is a must-have if you want to dissect what Scripture actually says about Christ in the many passages of Paul’s Letters, inclusive of the Pastoral Epistles. This work I find myself repeatedly consulting when I have questions about a particular verse or text in Paul on Christ.
7. Crispin Fletcher-Louis. Jesus Monotheism. Eugene: Cascade, 2015.
This one comes to me recommended by Craig Keener. A distinct aspect in this study, as its abstract claims, is that “it is first with Jesus and his followers that a human figure is included in the identity of the one God as a fully divine person.” This work emphasizes Adamic, Enochic, and Ruler Cult traditions to help supports its view on the origins of Christology. This is volume 1 of his Christological Origins: The Emerging Consensus and Beyond. In the future, we can expect three more volumes in this series.
8. Larry W. Hurtado. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
This tome by the late Hurtado is quintessential of his viewpoint on early Christian devotion and worship of Jesus. It begins with Jewish monotheism and works its way through Pauline Christians and Christ, Jewish Christians and Christ, the Q tradition, the Synoptic Gospels, Johannine Christians, and then other early Jesus Books and movements in the second century. His earlier related work, the shorter and easier to read, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism, has been reprinted in T&T Clark Cornerstones in 2015. It is also worth purchasing.
9. Joshua W. Jipp. The Messianic Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020.
Jipp builds this book on the confession of Jesus as Messianic king and Lord. This book is unique in that it covers this theme throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul’s Letters, disputed Pauline Letters, General Epistles (esp. Hebrews), and Revelation. That’s Part I. Then in Part II, Jipp employs a messianic approach to the theological subjects of Scripture, Christology, Soteriology, Sanctification and Ecclesiology, and then Politics, Power, and Eschatology. This is a well-researched and relatively up-to-date study that is an ideal textbook for seminary courses.
10. Matthew V. Novenson. Christ among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
This is a critically-acclaimed work that gives ancient Jewish messianism its due and claims that Paul’s language of Messiah is one example of it. Novenson has been influential in showing that for Paul, “Christ” (Christos), Greek for anointed one (Messiah), is neither a name nor title but an honorific, similar to the Roman Augustus or Alexander the Great. Another contemporary work that engages with ancient Jewish sources is Shirley Lucass’s The Concept of Messiah in the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity (LSTS 78. London: Bloomsbury, 2011). It consults messianism in Jewish Scripture and Second Temple sources and compares these with early Christian sources to argue for more compatibility than previously assumed. More works like these ones that engage with the Second Temple Jewish literature are needed. Whether or not you agree with the conclusions of such works, they often provide insights into the way we understand biblical Christology.
11. Brant Pitre, Jesus and Divine Christology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024.
This recent study combines high Christology with an historical approach to the Synoptic Gospels. It also covers some texts in John, too. More unique is that Pitre’s study shows through the other three Gospels a number of texts that support Jesus as divine. For my interview with Brant on this book, click here. For part II of the interview that centers on John’s Gospel, click here.
12. Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer. Origins of New Testament Christology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023.
Porter and Dyer approach their study by focusing on eleven different titles for Jesus: Lord, Son of Man, Messiah, Prophet, Suffering Servant, Son of God, Last Adam, Passover Lamb, Savior, Word, and High Priest. They examine relevant New Testament texts for each title as they interact with recent scholarship. The messianic title approach is reminiscent of Oscar Cullmann’s classic work, The Christology of the New Testament (London: SCM, 1959). This study makes a great textbook for seminary and relevant upper division undergraduate courses. I include it as one of the textbooks for my seminary class on Christology.
13. Darren Sumner and Chris Tilling, eds. T&T Clark Handbook of Christology. London: Bloomsbury, 2025.
This very recent collection includes over 30 essays from biblical and systematic-theological scholars. The book is divided into five parts, including the context and method in Christology, Jesus and the Trinity, Mission of the Son, Constitution of Christ, and the Work of Christ. This collection is too recent for me to review, but I do recognize the names of a number of the biblical contributors, and I respect their previous works. The unfortunate thing is the book’s price, which is way too high in my opinion.
For something more affordable along these lines, you might want to get Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin, eds. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013). Although it is not as centered on Christology as the T&T Clark volume, this dictionary does contain a number of relevant Christological articles, including, for example, the ascension, atonement (death of Jesus), Christ, Incarnation, Lord, Servant of Yahweh, Son of David, Son of God, Son of Man, and of course, Christology.
14. Chris Tilling. Paul’s Divine Christology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.
This study was originally a Mohr-Siebeck volume from 2012. The Eerdmans reprint is more affordable. Tilling’s work includes a very helpful section on the history of interpretation regarding Christology. Apart from this, his study is on 1 Corinthians 8–10. This passage has the advantage of being one of the earliest writings from the New Testament. In 1 Cor 8:4–6, Paul adds Jesus to the Jewish Shema of the one God. Another work on this passage that I could recommend, though expensive, is Erik Waaler’s The Shema and the First Commandment in First Corinthians: An Intertextual Approach to Paul’s Re-Reading of Deuteronomy (WUNT 2/253; Tübigen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008).
Reflections
As always, whenever I recommend books, this does mean that I endorse everything you might read from those books. Regarding my own bent on Christology, it is clear from my recommendations that I like works that support a high Christology.
What I would like to see are more books that connect the NT intertextual allusions and quotations from Jewish Scripture and thoughts relevant in Second Temple Judaism, and relate them to Christology. In Richard Hays’s Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), his section on “Jesus as the Crucified Messiah,” might be a good place to start. Madison N. Pierce also has focused on Scripture quotes and Christological texts in Hebrews in Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture (SNTSMS 178; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). More works on the atonement would also be appreciated.
For another Christology list recommending mostly older and patristic works, see Kirk Miller’s “The 7 Best Books on Christology, According to Logos Users”.
Notes
* For Johannine enthusiasts, Anderson’s work is more affordable than Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts’s edited collection of scholars’ essays in Johannine Christology, Johannine Studies vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), a work you might encourage your university library to purchase. Some other affordable works on Christology in John include Christopher M. Blumhofer, Diane G. Chen, Joel B. Green, eds. Early High Christology: John among the New Testament Writers (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2024), and William R. G. Loader, Jesus in John’s Gospel: Structure and Issues in Johannine Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).
** A pre-2000 work I could recommend that is somewhat user-friendly and argues well for divine Christology is Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992). It is exegetical in orientation, and it covers select passages in Paul, John, and other parts of the New Testament.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In